even let Ruth know he was back. He would go and see her when he
finished the article on the treasure-hunters. It was not so
difficult to abstain from seeing her, because of the violent heat
of creative fever that burned in him. Besides, the very article he
was writing would bring her nearer to him. He did not know how
long an article he should write, but he counted the words in a
double-page article in the Sunday supplement of the SAN FRANCISCO
EXAMINER, and guided himself by that. Three days, at white heat,
completed his narrative; but when he had copied it carefully, in a
large scrawl that was easy to read, he learned from a rhetoric he
picked up in the library that there were such things as paragraphs
and quotation marks. He had never thought of such things before;
and he promptly set to work writing the article over, referring
continually to the pages of the rhetoric and learning more in a day
about composition than the average schoolboy in a year. When he
had copied the article a second time and rolled it up carefully, he
read in a newspaper an item on hints to beginners, and discovered
the iron law that manuscripts should never be rolled and that they
should be written on one side of the paper. He had violated the
law on both counts. Also, he learned from the item that first-
class papers paid a minimum of ten dollars a column. So, while he
copied the manuscript a third time, he consoled himself by
multiplying ten columns by ten dollars. The product was always the
same, one hundred dollars, and he decided that that was better than
seafaring. If it hadn’t been for his blunders, he would have
finished the article in three days. One hundred dollars in three
days! It would have taken him three months and longer on the sea
to earn a similar amount. A man was a fool to go to sea when he
could write, he concluded, though the money in itself meant nothing
to him. Its value was in the liberty it would get him, the
presentable garments it would buy him, all of which would bring him
nearer, swiftly nearer, to the slender, pale girl who had turned
his life back upon itself and given him inspiration.
He mailed the manuscript in a flat envelope, and addressed it to
the editor of the SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER. He had an idea that
anything accepted by a paper was published immediately, and as he
had sent the manuscript in on Friday he expected it to come out on
the following Sunday. He conceived that it would be fine to let
that event apprise Ruth of his return. Then, Sunday afternoon, he
would call and see her. In the meantime he was occupied by another
idea, which he prided himself upon as being a particularly sane,
careful, and modest idea. He would write an adventure story for
boys and sell it to THE YOUTH’S COMPANION. He went to the free
reading-room and looked through the files of THE YOUTH’S COMPANION.
Serial stories, he found, were usually published in that weekly in
five instalments of about three thousand words each. He discovered
several serials that ran to seven instalments, and decided to write
one of that length.
He had been on a whaling voyage in the Arctic, once – a voyage that
was to have been for three years and which had terminated in
shipwreck at the end of six months. While his imagination was
fanciful, even fantastic at times, he had a basic love of reality
that compelled him to write about the things he knew. He knew
whaling, and out of the real materials of his knowledge he
proceeded to manufacture the fictitious adventures of the two boys
Martin Eden
53
he intended to use as joint heroes. It was easy work, he decided
on Saturday evening. He had completed on that day the first
instalment of three thousand words – much to the amusement of Jim,
and to the open derision of Mr. Higginbotham, who sneered
throughout meal-time at the “litery” person they had discovered in
the family.
Martin contented himself by picturing his brother-in-law’s surprise
on Sunday morning when he opened his EXAMINER and saw the article
on the treasure-hunters. Early that morning he was out himself to
the front door, nervously racing through the many-sheeted
newspaper. He went through it a second time, very carefully, then
folded it up and left it where he had found it. He was glad he had
not told any one about his article. On second thought he concluded
that he had been wrong about the speed with which things found
their way into newspaper columns. Besides, there had not been any
news value in his article, and most likely the editor would write
to him about it first.
After breakfast he went on with his serial. The words flowed from
his pen, though he broke off from the writing frequently to look up
definitions in the dictionary or to refer to the rhetoric. He
often read or re-read a chapter at a time, during such pauses; and
he consoled himself that while he was not writing the great things
he felt to be in him, he was learning composition, at any rate, and
training himself to shape up and express his thoughts. He toiled
on till dark, when he went out to the reading-room and explored
magazines and weeklies until the place closed at ten o’clock. This
was his programme for a week. Each day he did three thousand
words, and each evening he puzzled his way through the magazines,
taking note of the stories, articles, and poems that editors saw
fit to publish. One thing was certain: What these multitudinous
writers did he could do, and only give him time and he would do
what they could not do. He was cheered to read in BOOK NEWS, in a
paragraph on the payment of magazine writers, not that Rudyard
Kipling received a dollar per word, but that the minimum rate paid
by first-class magazines was two cents a word. THE YOUTH’S
COMPANION was certainly first class, and at that rate the three
thousand words he had written that day would bring him sixty
dollars – two months’ wages on the sea!
On Friday night he finished the serial, twenty-one thousand words
long. At two cents a word, he calculated, that would bring him
four hundred and twenty dollars. Not a bad week’s work. It was
more money than he had ever possessed at one time. He did not know
how he could spend it all. He had tapped a gold mine. Where this
came from he could always get more. He planned to buy some more
clothes, to subscribe to many magazines, and to buy dozens of
reference books that at present he was compelled to go to the
library to consult. And still there was a large portion of the
four hundred and twenty dollars unspent. This worried him until
the thought came to him of hiring a servant for Gertrude and of
buying a bicycle for Marion.
He mailed the bulky manuscript to THE YOUTH’S COMPANION, and on
Saturday afternoon, after having planned an article on pearl-
diving, he went to see Ruth. He had telephoned, and she went
Martin Eden
54
herself to greet him at the door. The old familiar blaze of health
rushed out from him and struck her like a blow. It seemed to enter
into her body and course through her veins in a liquid glow, and to
set her quivering with its imparted strength. He flushed warmly as
he took her hand and looked into her blue eyes, but the fresh
bronze of eight months of sun hid the flush, though it did not
protect the neck from the gnawing chafe of the stiff collar. She
noted the red line of it with amusement which quickly vanished as
she glanced at his clothes. They really fitted him, – it was his
first made-to-order suit, – and he seemed slimmer and better
modelled. In addition, his cloth cap had been replaced by a soft
hat, which she commanded him to put on and then complimented him on
his appearance. She did not remember when she had felt so happy.
This change in him was her handiwork, and she was proud of it and
fired with ambition further to help him.
But the most radical change of all, and the one that pleased her
most, was the change in his speech. Not only did he speak more
correctly, but he spoke more easily, and there were many new words
in his vocabulary. When he grew excited or enthusiastic, however,
he dropped back into the old slurring and the dropping of final
consonants. Also, there was an awkward hesitancy, at times, as he
essayed the new words he had learned. On the other hand, along